I’m torn between thinking that the administration knows what it is doing in regards to its public statements on the disastrous agreement to give Iran a nuclear weapon; that is, they have access to extensive polling data that shows their statements will move public opinion in their favor; and that they are the most pathetic collection of ignoramuses ever visited upon the American people and their statements are nothing more than them flailing about for anything that will make the pain go away. (Note to self: revisit definition of Hanlon’s Razor.)

Just last week, the administration took a page from their favorite historical reference, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and blamed an AP report detailing how the Iranians were going to be allowed to inspect their own facilities on a Jewish conspiracy to sabotage the deal. One hardly knows who this argument was appealing to other than Ron Paul supporters, Nation of Islam members, and New Black Panther Party thugs.

Now they’ve rolled out another reason why people should support the agreement: it makes it easier to bomb Iran.

In meetings on Capitol Hill and with influential policy analysts, administration officials argue that inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities under the deal will reveal important details that can be used for better targeting should the U.S. decide to attack Iran.

“It’s certainly an argument I’ve heard made,” said [mc_name name=’Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’S001150′ ], the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “We’ll be better off with the agreement were we to need to use force.”

Schiff has already announced his support for the Iran deal. But the argument could be useful as the administration tries to persuade centrist Democrats with a hawkish view of Iran to support the agreement, which provides relief from sanctions for Iran in return for curbs and inspections of its nuclear program. Congress is expected to vote on the deal next month.
…
While U.S. officials are guarded in their discussion of military options, “it’s been on their minds for some time,” said one person who has spoken often with the administration’s Iran policymakers.

Analysts said the military benefits of having a clearer view of Iran’s program is an undeniable feature of the agreement.

“If you want to bomb the program, you should be superexcited about this deal,” said Austin Long, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs who studies U.S. military options against Iran. “The more you know about Iran’s nuclear program and the industrial infrastructure behind that program, the better you will be able to target it.”

Although the U.S. is already well aware of Iran’s major nuclear sites, such as its uranium enrichment plants at Fordow and Natanz, Pentagon planners lack detailed knowledge about the country’s “supply chain” — facilities that build essential components like centrifuges as well as its uranium mines and mills.

“These are exactly the kind of things you would want to destroy, so you don’t just cripple their ability to enrich uranium” but also Iran’s ability to reconstitute their enrichment program, Long said.

I hope this guy, Austin Long, is getting paid good money by the administration because it would be a shame to see someone beclown themselves so completely for no other reason than blind obeisance to Obama.

As has been documented over and over and over, the Iranians have never had to disclose the scope or extent of their nuclear program. So the negotiations has not yielded any new information. Arguably, we might be able map supply chains, etc., better because now we are shipping nuclear equipment to Iran legally and we’ve given them over $100 billion to spend on stuff. Some of that stuff, though, is not nuclear and makes any military strike more problematic:

Iran will sign a contract with Russia next week to buy four S-300 surface-to-air missile systems, the Iranian defense minister said on Tuesday, bringing Tehran closer to acquiring an advanced air defense capability.

Russian state arms producer Almaz-Antey in June said it would supply Iran with a modernized version of the S-300, among the world’s most capable air defense systems, once a commercial agreement was reached.

“The text of the contract is ready and our friends will go to Russia next week to sign the contract,” Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

Russia says it canceled a contract to deliver S-300s to Iran in 2010 under pressure from the West. But President Vladimir Putin lifted that self-imposed ban in April following an interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

And, of course, any military strike would be complicated by the fact that Iran could very well have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.

The White House did not make a deal with Iran any more than Czechoslovakia made a deal with Germany in 1938. It simply surrendered. Now it is trying to tart the abject capitulation up as a major foreign policy coup. It isn’t. All Obama did was guarantee that a future US president will have to go to war with a nuclear Iran.